FBI’s Wray says AI has been used to amplify ‘terrorist propaganda’

FBI Director Christopher Wray warned that artificial intelligence (AI) has been used to amplify “terrorist propaganda” and has been reconfigured by terrorist groups in efforts to remove safeguards blocking malicious activities. 

“We’ve seen AI used to essentially amplify the distribution or dissemination of terrorist propaganda,” Wray said at the first public summit of the Five Eyes, a long-standing intelligence alliance between the U.S. and four of its allies, according to The Guardian.

Terrorist groups have also attempted to “circumvent safeguards built into AI infrastructure” that could allow them to, for instance, search how to build a bomb or how to conceal searches on how to build a bomb, Wray added.

The head of British intelligence, Ken McCallum, similarly warned of the possibility that groups can “jailbreak” these AI safeguards, The Guardian reported.

“If you are experienced in security, you would be unwise to rely on these controls remaining impregnable,” he said. “So, there is clear risk that some of these systems can be used, put to uses that their makers do not intend.”

The public meeting between the intelligence chiefs from the U.S., U.K., Australia, Canada and New Zealand — which Wray described as an “unprecedented event to confront an unprecedented threat” — primarily focused on intellectual property and data theft by the Chinese government.

“Beijing has long targeted AI — a field where the U.S., and San Francisco and Silicon Valley in particular, lead the world,” Wray said from the summit in Palo Alto, Calif.

“Now, they’re working to use AI to improve their already massive hacking operations, using our own technology against us,” he added. “It is outrageous.”